Photo Credit: Sam Rivers by Achim Raschka / CC by 3.0
Limp Bizkit bassist and founding member Sam Rivers passed away on Saturday, the band confirmed on social media. He was 48.
Sam Rivers, founding member and bassist of Limp Bizkit, passed away on Saturday, October 18. He was 48 years old. The band confirmed the news of his passing on social media, though his cause of death has not yet been publicly disclosed.
“Today we lost our brother. Our bandmate. Our heartbeat,” wrote Limp Bizkit on Instagram, shared alongside a photo of Rivers. “Sam Rivers wasn’t just our bass player—he was pure magic. The pulse beneath every song, the calm in the chaos, the soul in the sound.”
“From the first note we ever played together, Sam brought a light and a rhythm that could never be replaced,” the band’s statement continued. “His talent was effortless, his presence unforgettable, his heart enormous.”
River first met frontman Fred Durst while in Jacksonville, Florida. The two played together in the short-lived band Malachi Sage, which dissolved in 1994. At that point, Rivers and Durst teamed up with drummer John Otto, and Limp Bizkit was born. Shortly thereafter, they added guitarist Wes Borland to the mix to round out the original lineup.
Limp Bizkit’s debut album, Three Dollar Bill Y’all, was released in 1997. But their sophomore album, 1999’s Significant Other, featuring the lead single “Nookie,” launched the band to mainstream heights and reached #1 on the Billboard 200 album chart.
In 2000, Limp Bizkit’s Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water made history as the highest debut-week sales for a rock album at the time.
Borland was in and out of the band beginning in 2001, and newer recruit DJ Lethal was also in and out over the years. But Rivers and Otto remained with Durst through the group’s first hiatus in 2006.
In 2015, Rivers left the band due to what was reportedly a degenerative disc disease, but he later revealed that he had liver disease in the book, Raising Hell (Backstage Tales From the Lives of Metal Legends).
“I had to leave Limp Bizkit in 2015 because I felt so horrible, and a few months after that, I realized I had to change everything because I had really bad liver disease,” Rivers wrote. “I quit drinking and did everything the doctors told me. I got treatment for the alcohol and got a liver transplant, which was a perfect match.”
Rivers returned to the band in 2018 and remained a member until his death. Limp Bizkit’s most recent album was 2021’s Still Sucks, their first album in ten years.
